I've been wanting to try my hand at making a tres leches cake for a while now. Having grown up eating this at every one of my birthdays, it's always been my favorite type of cake. Even now, it still shocks me that so many people don't like it at all. It must be a texture thing because all the people who don't like it, don't like that it's "soggy" but that's what gives it flavor and that's also a result of how it got it's name.
Tres leches in Spanish means three milks and just as the name suggests, a tres leches cake is a sponge cake that's been soaked with three different kinds of milk. Evaporated milk, condensed milk, and whole milk mixed together and poured onto the sponge cake gives it the texture that it has and adds an extra bit of sweetness to the cake that's great for people who have a sweet tooth!
Now, the reason I made this was not only because of my love for tres leches cake, but also because all of the cake I've ever had in the past was either coffee flavored or regular vanilla flavored, but I wanted to experiment and see it making one out of strawberry flavored cake mix would taste good.
The outcome? Well, my family certainly enjoyed it, so that's a success in my books!
Making the cake itself is pretty simple. I don't typically make my desserts from scratch just because that's a whole lot of work and a whole lot of cleaning so to make the actual cake, I simply used some strawberry cake mix that I bought at the grocery store, to make the cake, simply follow the instructions on the back!
I typically substitute some of the ingredients, like instead of using vegetable oil, I use butter. Instead of water, I use milk, and I use three large eggs instead of two. I've found that this makes cakes and cupcakes a lot tastier.
In a large bowl mix together:
The strawberry cake mix
1 cup of milk
8 tbsp of melted butter
3 large eggs
Pour it into a greased pan and pop it into the oven preheated to 375 and leave it to bake until a toothpick can come out cleanly.
The next part is also pretty simple, making the tres leches mixture.
Simply mix together one can of evaporated milk, one can of condensed milk, and 1 cup of whole milk. You can also use heavy cream!
Set the mixture to the side and once the cake has cooled down, cut off the excess from the top.
Next, take a fork and start poking holes into the cake. This is so that the tres leches mixture will soak into the whole cake without leaving any dry pieces.
After this, it's time to pour the mixture onto the cake! Go slowly until all of your mixture has been absorbed by the cake.
It's very tempting to want to eat it right away after this, but it's not quite ready yet. Once you've poured the tres leches mixture and the cake has absorbed it, you cover it in plastic wrap an leave it in the fridge for 3-5 hours to let it really settle in there. Waiting is the worst part, but it's totally worth it!
Finally, after those 3-5 hours are up, you can decorate your cake with either homemade frosting, or cool whip from the store like what I did. Garnish your dessert with some strawberry slices and dig in!
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